The ORIGINAL gathering place for a merry band of Three Percenters. (As denounced by Bill Clinton on CNN!)

Friday, July 30, 2010

Praxis: The BCM Gunfighter Charging Handle for AR15/M4/M16

OK, folks, will anybody who has ever had problems with their Eugene-Stoner-designed Mouse Gun charging handle please raise their hand? (Mine's up.) The solution below is a little pricey (Fifty bucks per) but does provide a solution to the most common problem.

When the AR15 system was first introduced to and fielded by the US Military in the 1960s, the manual of arms for an infantryman was significantly different than what currently exists today. To charge the rifle the shooter released their hand from a firing grip, grabbed each side of the charging handle with the thumb and forefinger or the first two fingers , (while applying pressure to the latch) pulled the charging handle all the way to the rear, and then released it to charge the weapon.

Like everything else in the last 45 years, tactics and weaponry have undergone a continuous evolution. Red dot optics get the shooter on target quicker, shorter barrels allow the operator to more quickly negotiate tighter urban areas, and operator's manipulations of the weapon system have become much more efficient and faster. The current manual of arms has the operator maintaining a firing grip almost continuously while manipulating the weapon with the non-dominant hand in an effort to more quickly get the weapon ready to fire. With that premise, most weapon manipulations are done only with the shooter's support hand; to include operating the charging handle.

In order to perform an immediate action or charge the carbine, current CQB techniques have the operator racking the charging handle to the rear using their support side hand only. This is done in one swift and strong movement. With the operator's firing grip maintained, the weapon again has a loaded chamber, and the shooter can immediately bring a hot weapon back into the fight.

The current use of extended tactical latches has made this movement much more efficient. The only drawback to this type of manipulation is all the force used to rack the charging handle rearward goes into the extended tactical latch and is then transferred into the roll pin. With this scenario, the entire operation becomes contingent on the sheer strength of this tiny 1/16th roll pin, and its' ability to take continuing blows. Repeated and forceful support hand only racking of the charging handle eventually can lead to breaking the roll pin and loosing the latch completely. With the latch blown out, the charging handle will not stay secured to the receiver as the bolt is moving back and forth during each cycle of the weapon's action. Not a good situation on a two way range. . .

The BCMGUNFIGHTER Charging Handle and extended latches feature internal redesigns to direct the force off of the roll pin and into the body of the charging handle during support hand only manipulations. This new design has a built in backstop engineered into the extended latch and into the charging handle. As the latch is opened up, its' travel is limited by these flat surface backstops. With this travel limiting feature, the stress is taken off the roll pin, and is now redirected into the entire body of the charging handle.

The BCMGUNFIGHTER Charging Handle offers two significant advantages.

1. Since the tiny roll pin is no longer the weak point - it is an stronger system and tactical latch will stay intact even under repeated support side only manipulation.

2. With the force kept inside the body of the handle, when the handle is pulled directly to the rear, it moves directly to the rear and does not angle off to the outboard side. A much smoother operation.

On the cutaway computer drawings you can see the inside machining of the latch. It shows the 3 inside contact surfaces. (The 2 semi circular cuts are to aid in the removal of dirt and debris that can get inside the handle.)

On the bottom view you can see the outside of the latch itself. It is actually as thick as the handle. This provides 2 additional contact surfaces to insure the force is maintained inside the handle and offers the operator more contact surface to manipulate the handle.

And while you have that bolt / carrier assembly out to replace the charging handle, take an extra couple of minutes to tap out your SOLID extractor pin and replace it with a ROLL pin. The solid pins can, and do, break on rare occasion. A roll pin is quite a bit beefier.

I have NEVER had a problem with my charging handle. In more than 25 years of Army service in Combat Arms, I've NEVER had a problem with the M16/M4 charging handle.

The B Co charging handle is nice, especially with the large finger grip. I'm going to install one on my incoming DPMS AP4 .308/7.62. However, I truly believe the 50 beans spent on it is better spent on ammo and/or silver.

The Bravo Company charging handle is the answer to a non-existent problem.

What Does It Mean To Be A "Three Percenter"?

These four principles -- moral strength, physical readiness, no first use of force and no targeting of innocents -- are the hallmarks of the Three Percent ideal. Anyone who cannot accept them as a self-imposed discipline in the fight to restore the Founders' Republic should find something else to do and cease calling themselves a "Three Percenter."

No, I'm NOT Charlie. I am ARMED.

Edmund Burke reconsidered in the light of 20th Century funeral pyres.

"Remember: Evil exists because good men don't kill the government officials committing it." -- Kurt Hofmann.

The Nyberg Battle Flag of the Three Percent

This time we are ALL Davidians. This time, we are all Jews, Kulaks, "counter-revolutionists" and "enemies of the state." We are now a despised minority within a country no longer our own.BUT WE WILL NOT BE DESPISED.

My Blog List

Advice on child rearing from my son.

Everyone should grow up with simulated equipment from a heavy weapons platoon. It gives you a more well rounded education and an appreciation for the finer things in life. -- Sergeant Matthew Vanderboegh, United States Army.

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

On the efficacy of passive resistance in the face of the collectivist beast. . .

Had the Japanese got as far as India, Gandhi's theories of "passive resistance" would have floated down the Ganges River with his bayoneted, beheaded carcass. -- Mike Vanderboegh.

In the future . . .

When the histories are written, “National Rifle Association” will be cross-referenced with “Judenrat.” -- Mike Vanderboegh to Sebastian at "Snowflakes in Hell"

"Smash the bloody mirror."

If you find yourself through the looking glass, where the verities of the world you knew and loved no longer apply, there is only one thing to do. Knock the Red Queen on her ass, turn around, and smash the bloody mirror. -- Mike Vanderboegh

From Kurt Hoffman over at Armed and Safe.

"I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable."

From long experience myself, I can only say, "You betcha."

"Only cowards dare cringe."

The fears of man are many. He fears the shadow of death and the closed doors of the future. He is afraid for his friends and for his sons and of the specter of tomorrow. All his life's journey he walks in the lonely corridors of his controlled fears, if he is a man. For only fools will strut, and only cowards dare cringe. -- James Warner Bellah, "Spanish Man's Grave" in Reveille, Curtis Publishing, 1947.

"We fight an enemy that never sleeps."

"As our enemies work bit by bit to deconstruct, we must work bit by bit to REconstruct. Be mindful where we should be. Set goals. We fight an enemy that never sleeps. We must learn to sleep less." -- Mike H. at What McAuliffe Said

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.